Oakland Park Officials Advance Urban League’s Plan For 19-Acre Housing Complex
The Urban League of Broward County’s decade-old plan to build an affordable housing development 4 miles north of Downtown Fort Lauderdale got closer to breaking ground at an Oakland Park City Commission meeting Wednesday.
City commissioners voted unanimously to pass the first reading of two zoning changes that the Urban League needs to move forward on the 469-unit Village at Oakland Park, slated to be developed on 19.4 acres at the corner of Northwest 21st Avenue and Northwest 26th Street.
The proposal includes 355 apartments and 144 for-sale townhomes on land owned by the Urban League, Broward County Public Schools and Harris Chapel Church, which is located on the site.
“We have a housing affordability challenge in the state of Florida, we know that Broward County ranks last among the counties as it relates to housing affordability,” Germaine Smith-Baugh, CEO of Urban League of Broward County, told Bisnow Friday. “There's a lot of development happening in the city of Oakland Park, and we want to make sure that that development is equitable.”
The church would remain at the property, and the development proposal includes a 30K SF community center and an 8K SF preschool. The project would also have 795 parking spaces, including a three-story garage with 383 spaces.
Units at the development would be available for residents making between 30% and 140% of the area median income. Broward County’s AMI is $67K for a single person, according to the Florida Housing Finance Corp.
The Urban League has worked on the project for the last decade, and development plans have shifted over the years. A 2019 proposal for a smaller development called for 100 apartments for residents making between 60% and 120% of AMI. The nonprofit began holding community meetings to win support for the development in 2021.
Commissioners lauded the Urban League proposal for its broad income ranges and inclusion of homes for purchase, and several community members and local leaders at the meeting Wednesday spoke in favor of the development and about the need for affordable housing in the area.
“The community as a whole — the stakeholders, government, businesses, local residents, everybody — now really sees this issue of housing affordability as the true challenge that it is,” Smith-Baugh said. “Five years ago, I would have probably been laughed out of the room, which I was, around this. Now I'm invited into all the rooms.”
The proposal will next have to win approval from the Broward County Planning Council and county commissioners before the zoning changes return to the Oakland Park City Commission for final approval.
Smith-Baugh said she’s had positive conversations with county officials and is hoping to complete the entitlement process this year and break ground on the project in late 2025.
The Village at Oakland Park would consist of five apartment buildings, five townhome buildings and 26 duplex-style townhomes. The tallest building would be five stories, and the development would have 7.3 acres of open space, including a playground and community garden.
The Urban League owns 5.6 acres of the total site, with Harris Chapel entering into a joint partnership with the nonprofit and contributing 4.5 acres.
The remaining 9.6 acres are part of the Rock Island Professional Development Center owned by Broward County Schools. The school district declared the land as surplus in 2021 and agreed to sell it to the Urban League once the entitlement process is completed, Smith-Baugh said.
Florida Blue, an affiliate of the insurance firm Blue Cross Blue Shield, pledged $1M toward the project's development in 2021, and Bank of America pledged $200K through its Neighborhood Builders program in 2020.
Smith-Baugh said those funds have been deployed to shepherd the project through the pre-development process and the Urban League will be looking at a diverse pool of funding sources to get the project built, including equity investors and debt.
“Equity can come in the form of philanthropy, foundations, corporations and the like,” Smith-Baugh said. “The simple answer is that the more equity, the more affordable this gets.”
The Urban League has been approached by several developers looking to get involved in the project, Smith-Baugh said, but the nonprofit is planning to complete the entitlement process before exploring a joint partnership because it wants to maintain control over the development's size and scope.
“Economic freedom is freedom,” she said, “The more that you're able to stay in control of your destiny for as long as you can, as appropriately as you can — that was important to us as the organization.”
UPDATE, FEB. 9, 3:30 P.M. ET: The story has been updated to include comments from Urban League of Broward County CEO Germaine Smith-Baugh.
